The Power of Civic Time with Jenn Richkus and Jon Desenberg
In the latest installment of the Knowledge-Driven Podcast, join us as Jenn Richkus and Jon Desenburg share how they are using their civic time to help the Endangered Wildlife Trust improve life for people and animals across the African continent.
Aviation Industry Update with Bob and Michael: June 2021
Another quarter, another aviation industry update. Join us as Bob Brents and Michael Wells walk us through an economic recovery spanning everything you ever spent money on. Even if you never plan to fly again, you’ll still learn some powerful insights about the invisible forces you interact with everyday!
Uniting to Fight the Global Water Crisis
John Halamka, president of the Mayo Clinic Platform, and Doc Hendley, founder of Wine To Water, a nonprofit organization that helps communities around the world develop sustainable clean water solutions, spoke at a MITRE speaker series event this spring. They spoke about the challenges communities at home and abroad face accessing clean water. Read how this speaker series impacted Liv Blackmon, which led to over 50 employees signing up to help and donate to World Water Day.
The Untapped Potential of Serious Games, with Peter Leveille
MITRE employees are always hard at work, solving problems for a safer world. However, would you believe that some of those problems are best suited to be solved by the development of fun games? On this episode of the MITRE Knowledge Driven Podcast, Principal Software Systems Engineer Peter Leveille gives us an introductory lesson on serious games and the underrated potential of their application as a tool in development work.
Mentoring the Workforce of the Future and Reverse-Mentoring the Workforce of the Present, with Steffani Silva
In this installment of the MITRE Knowledge Driven Podcast, Data Analytics Engineer Steffani Silva, gives us an inside look at the inner workings of Generation AI Nexus, a collaboration among MITRE, universities, and government that educates students, as well as professors, on the power of artificial intelligence and accessible data.
An Introduction to Graph Theory, Using Gephi
Have you ever wondered how Google Maps works? How does the application calculate the fastest route for you, and how does it do this so quickly? The answer might surprise you – at the backbone of these navigational applications and software is graph theory.
Internet of Things Data: From Glut to Glory
According to the independent website Government Technology, “Many government agencies have an unstructured data nightmare, with bits and bytes scattered across servers, clouds and hypervisors.” Vernor Vinge calls this so-called nightmare “data glut.” In an era of Internet of Things (IoT), the data glut may not get better, and, in fact, is likely to get worse.
Sustainable Diet, Sustainable World: Community Supported Agriculture Helps Make Both Happen
When you buy your groceries, the best and brightest fruits and veggies have usually traveled across the country and sometimes across the world to get to you. This supply chain bypasses the perfectly fresh produce local to your community. Our traditional market practices have enormously high transportation and carbon costs, create massive amounts of wasted food, and may leave our local farmers with unsustainable businesses.
So what can we do to address these problems?
Energy Masters: Improving the Water and Energy Efficiency of Under-Invested Communities
“Weatherizing my home? What does that mean?” “I’m only renting. Why should I care?” “That sounds complicated and expensive.”
These are common responses Kathy Huynh would hear from renters living in the lower-income apartment complexes where she spent time volunteering as an Energy Master. Energy Masters is a program focused on providing information and services for under-invested communities in Arlington and Alexandria. The objective is to help residents decrease their energy and water usage and utility bills, while, ideally, increasing comfort levels in units.
Pivoting From In-Person to Virtual Transformation When That’s the Only Option
The pace of change accelerated across organizations over the past year, perhaps even more so across the government, given the previously limited telework capacity and available resources for robust virtual collaboration. This post focuses on lessons learned while taking a high-engagement, in-person, transformational change method into the virtual world to support the Census Bureau’s effort to design a 21st-century organization.
The Road to Resilient, Sustainable Infrastructure is a Smart One
When Charles Clancy helped launch Virginia’s Smart City Innovation Competition in January, he mentioned that, despite being MITRE’s Chief Futurist, his job didn’t come with a crystal ball.
Instead, he told the hundred or so innovators participating in the month-long hackathon—the first of its kind in Virginia—that his job is to think beyond the challenges facing the government today, focus on likely challenges in the future, and ensure that MITRE has talent with the schooling and smarts to prepare for those problems.
Humble Beginnings
Once upon a time, when it was uncommon to wear a medical mask in public, I was a mechanical engineering student at the University of Oklahoma. As anyone who’s been to the Southeast will know, Oklahoma is oil country. Therefore, when I went to the career fair in the Spring semester of my junior year, I had filtered out all of the companies that had anything to do with the petroleum industry. I was left with only a few companies that piqued my interest. One of these companies was MITRE.
What You Need to Know About Post Quantum Crypto, With Perry Loveridge
Researchers have been vocal about the rise of quantum computers and how they may come to fundamentally undermine our assurance in cryptography (AKA the backbone of protecting all our digital interactions). Enter Perry Loveridge, the MITRE engineer paving a path towards a future where all of our digital interactions can be protected, even from quantum computers.
March Aviation Industry Update, with Michael Wells and Bob Brents
Air travel has become so common place to the point where many of us never even think about the wonder of flying on an aircraft or being able to send things around the world over night. And yet every day, countless agencies and individuals around the world move in a coordinated ballet even in the face of a global pandemic. In this session of the tri-annual Aviation Industry Update podcast, Michael Wells and Bob Brents focus on the complex logistics involved with distributing COVID vaccines across the country as well as the various applications that can help ease travel restrictions for a public eager to get back to normal.
Dr. David E. Willmes on Solving Global Food Insecurity
Approximately 2 billion people lack regular access to sufficient quality food. The issue of global food insecurity is one that is constantly being looked at and, fortunately, MITRE is stepping up to help mitigate this problem. Dr. David E. Willmes discusses his team’s project and how it uses significant crop and consumption data to better understand the factors at play in this global problem.
Mist Computing: Everything Computing Everywhere
One of the key metrics for measuring how fast a computer performs is through floating-point operations (i.e., any mathematical operation on two decimal numbers, such as +, -, *, /) per second. You would be amazed if you were to compare the Apollo 11 Guidance Computer with today’s iPhone 12’s 16-core Apple Neural Engine.
MOCHA is Way More Than a Drink
When you launch a project team, what are your go-to methods for kicking off, building cohesion, establishing goals, and delivering value together? If you’ve been thinking about refreshing your toolkit, would you consider a customizable process—with or without steamed milk—to ensure that everyone knows why they are on the project and why it is going to be the best one ever?
The Power of Geospatial Data In Developing Countries
Many countries in the Global South are not fortunate enough to have the infrastructure or tools that we take for granted. Things as simple as knowing where a community is can mean life or death when battling disease. Join us as Dr. Victoria M. Gammino walks us through her work turning geospatial data into the tools and technology needed to keep the world healthy and disease free.
The Best Security Against Quantum Attack Isn’t Quantum Key Distribution
Every day, billions of people connect to the internet. When you log on to your favorite website, mitre.org for example, you can be quite safe in assuming that what you get is the real MITRE website and not a random server pretending to be mitre.org to steal information. You can also safely assume that you are the only one who can log on to your bank account and access all the information contained in it.